Page 129 of Bobby Green

“Yeah, you looked pretty fucking tough when you were sitting on a helpless woman,” the cop snarled, and Bobby lost his temper.

“She almost killed us!”

“Okay, okay—but if you think I’m bad, wait until the social workers get hold of you. And don’t think I don’t want to help them out. You two, carrying on when a respectable woman lived under the same roof. Fucking perverts.”

Bobby stared at him, realizing that here was the hatred he’d feared his whole life in Dogpatch, smacking him in the face when he’d least expected it in Sacramento—and he didn’t care.

“I’m not talking to you anymore,” he decided coldly, turning his shoulder away from the cop. He’d managed to snag his cell phone and a pair of jeans on the way out of the house. “Reg, baby, hold on. I’m gonna call Dex. He’s got that lawyer guy. We need some fucking help.”

Reg nodded sadly. “Where’s my sister? Do you know?”

“We took her to booking,” the cop said. “You assholes said she tried to kill you.”

“Oh Jesus.” Bobby closed his eyes. “Mentally fucking ill.She needs the psych ward and restraints. Get her out of jail, you asshole. Fuck. Just fuck.” He pulled out his phone and dialed Dex’s number. “Dex?” he said weakly into the phone. “Dex? Yeah. Bobby. No, the gig went fine but….” He grabbed Reg’s hand and clung. “We need some fucking help.”

THE COPkept up, relentless, in the ambulance, in the hospital. A social worker arrived—nobody Bobby knew—while Reg was being triaged in a curtained chamber. A nurse was injecting Bobby’s wound with lidocaine, and Bobby’s world became a whirlwind of questions, of insinuations, of accusations, while Bobby listened to people ordering tests for Reg and tried not to whine like a baby about his own hurts.

“So you just woke up and she was beating you with a shovel?” the cop said for the umpteenth time.

“How is it Mr. Williams got care of his sister?” the social worker asked.

“Yes—she got it from my truck. I was landscaping. And their mom left when he was a kid. V sort of tricked him into signing her conservatorship papers.”

“She tricked him?” The social worker was an older woman, looked like she’d seen the wars. Well, if this was her job, Bobby imagined her whole life felt like a war.

“He was sixteen! She told him that hospitals were real shitholes, and he loved her, so he faked their mom’s signature to say he was taking care of her.”

“But he’s not sixteen anymore,” the cop said. “He knows better now!”

“Have youbeen there?” Bobby snarled. “’Cause we were. We went to the shitty one to the better one to the better one, and I gotta tell you, they don’t seem all that awesome to me!”

“No, they’re not nice places,” the social worker soothed, but she had a sarcastic edge too, like what did he expect? “So your friend, he’s been trying to keep his sister out of them. Do you have any proof she’s been skipping her meds?”

“Yeah—we figured last week. We’ve been forcing her to take them—”

“Forcing?” the cop sneered. “’Cause I’d want to hit you with a shovel too!”

“I wanna hit you with a fucking shovel right now, and I haven’t had so much as an aspirin!Fucking ouch!”

“Sorry,” the nurse apologized. “I’ll go get you some painkillers when we’re done here.”

“Answer the question, junior. What’s it look like, this ‘forcing’ her to take her medication?”

To his relief, the social worker came to his rescue. “Exactly what you think it looks like, Officer. The only difference was her brother and his friend holding her down and keeping her calm instead of a bunch of strangers with handcuffs and a straightjacket and a needle full of Demerol. Managing the severely mentally ill isn’t for the weak.”

Bobby wasn’t expecting tears to start, but that did it. “Reg tries so hard,” he said.

“Yeah?” the cop came back in his face. “Your little buddy tries hard? That’s pretty fuckin’ weak, considering from what I can see he’s a retard who can’t keep his dick in his pants!”

Later, Bobby would think back to that moment, to his kneejerk reaction, wondering if he gave the cop the opening he needed. But then, all he knew was that his vision went red, like it had when he’d backed off with Trey, when he’d been hitting Keith. Except this time he was in pain, and panicked, and angry, and this guy had just used the biggest, scariest word in Reg’s world.

“He isnotretarded!”

Bobby didn’t make the conscious decision toward violence, but it took two cops and a three-point restraint to pin him to the ground.

“Nice!” the cop howled in his face when they’d jerked him up. “Nice! We got you on assaulting an officer! Do you feel like a big man now, not jumping on a hundred-pound woman?”

“She’sdangerous!” Bobby sobbed desperately. “She’ssick. And he can’t do it. He wants to do it—he’s worked his whole life to take care of her, but hecan’t. It’s killing him! And it’s killingme. I don’t care what you think of me, but don’t let her go home with him again.” He caught his breath, aware he was crying and shouting and—oh fuck—Reg was right on the other side of the curtain. “She’ll kill him,” he whispered, pressing his face against the floor. “She’ll kill him without me. She’s killing him slow as it is.”